The sun hangs heavy in the sky and the throngs of pedestrians on the street are making progress difficult. But it’s just another day in the life of Shawn Conner, amateur detective.

Or is it? Because usually on a summer Thursday afternoon around this time I would be thinking about calling it a day not with some P. I. ing, but with an IPA.

Instead, I’m on the trail of clues that will lead me to the murderer of Aiden Noluck.

In Vancouver Mysteries’ Crime in Downtown, you don’t have to be a super-sleuth to get the bad guy (or girl). But you do have to figure out some pretty tricky clues invented by the game’s creator, Sevan Flament.

Originally from Aix-en-Provence in the South of France, Flament lived in Paris for five years. It was there that the seeds for what would become Crime in Downtown were planted in the mystery fan’s head.

“It’s inspired by this game in Paris, but that’s more of a scavenger hunt,” Flament said. “It’s a really big success there.”

He came to Vancouver seven months ago. After unsuccessful attempts to get a marketing job in town, he decided to create his own version of the game he’d experienced in Paris.

“Since I was young I liked creating games, and I really like mysteries, especially Agatha Christie’s,” he said. “I wanted to combine the two.”

“The story was more complicated,” Flament said. “It started in Gastown and went to the Vancouver Art Gallery, and there were 24 clues. I took only the best clues for this game.”

The new version takes approximately two hours and has 14 clues.

“This is more like the board game Clue,” he said.

As a relative newcomer to the city and lover of history, Flament has taken pains to make Crime in Downtown educational as well as entertaining.

Players are given a laminated “road book” containing background information on the characters and crime, as well as directions to the clues and sometimes directions on interpreting the clues. There are also “Did you know?” boxes on most of the pages featuring tidbits of historical info on Gastown locations like Blood Alley, Waterfront Station and more.

Players are also given a detective kit-bag that includes a compass, a tape-measure, a magnifying glass, and a hand-held mirror, among other items, to help find and interpret clues.

A game leader co-ordinates the groups of detectives at the start and meets them at the end, but the rest of the time the amateur sleuths are on their own.

The clues vary in complexity. One might be as simple as finding an air vent and using the hand-mirror to see the message taped underneath.

My favourite involved a row of faces carved into the stone of a Gastown building front. In the road book, the row of faces are reproduced but in several different orders. It is up to you, the detective, to figure out which order mirrors the actual building facade, and figure out the clue from there.

Before the game, this longtime Vancouverite had no idea those faces even existed.

It’s “a great way to discover Vancouver!” one Vancouver-based reviewer writes on TripAdvisor, where the game is ranked #11 of 119 activities in the city.

Most of his business comes from tourists, Flament says. “Because it’s summer, 90 per cent of the players come from another country,” and most of those come from the U.S. He’d like to increase the number of locals.

“It’s also for people who live here, who can learn hidden stories about Vancouver.”

In the two months since he officially started doing Crime in Downtown, the game has grown, he says.

The game can be played morning, afternoon or evening; players register at vancouvermysteries.com. It costs $20 per each player, or $18 each for a group of four or more. There are also special rates for the under-12 set.

Flament says the best way to play the game is with competing teams of two to four people.

After all the clues have been discovered, it’s up to the junior Sam Spades and Kinsey Millhones to return to the starting point (the urban park between Hastings and Cordova just west of Howe) and use a little deductive reasoning to come to the (only) logical conclusion. Players are evaluated on correctly deducing the perpetrator, the length of time it takes to complete the mission and answering a bonus question based on the info in the “Did you know?” boxes.

This amateur detective completed the case (successfully, I might add) in just under two hours.

In the end, I scored 91 points – nine points short of “perfect detective” status. I guess I should’ve paid more attention to the “Did you know?” box on Waterfront Station.